At Winter is Coming, we’re used to writing about one giant wall in particular, and it was the first thing I thought about when I saw the giant wall in the Upside Down in Stranger Things 5.
Spoilers ahead for Stranger Things 5 episode 4, "Sorcerer."
After tracking the demogorgon who took Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) into the Upside Down, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), who comes across Hopper (David Harbour), follows the trail until they reach a giant wall. The thinking is that Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) is behind the wall, somehow, with Holly held captive.
The questions immediately start flying. What is this gigantic wall? Why is it there? How is it there?
Eleven tries her best to break through the wall, but there’s nothing happening. She isn’t strong enough to make that happen. But, she closed the gate between the worlds with less strength than she has now. She threw Henry Creel into the Upside Down when she was just a little kid. Surely, she can tear down this wall, right? RIGHT?!
Well, not yet! And, interestingly, after Steve (Joe Keery) takes a big chance that the portal to the Upside Down is like a bopper and chases the demogorgon through the portal, he slams his car into the wall on a different part of town. Are there two walls in Hawkins now?
The answer comes pretty quickly afterward.
In the Upside Down, a wall surrounds Hawkins in a perfect circle
Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) does a little bit of math, geometry, or algebra. I don’t know exactly what he does. Steve and I are equally confused, but Dustin realizes that the wall is a perfect circle around Hawkins in the Upside Down. And, what’s at the center? The Hawkins National Lab, where all of this started.
Now, I have a lot of theories about what the wall could represent, but I don’t know how right those theories could be.
But, at this point, we know that there is a wall surround Hawkins and the Hawkins National Lab is at the center. He also mentions there’s a frequency of the wall itself that is causing interference on their radio, which is what was causing the problems earlier.
Why is the Hawkins National Lab at the center? Is that where Vecna could actually be hiding? Is the wall a literal manifestation of the end of his power over the Upside Down?
It makes one wonder about the origins of the Upside Down and if the Upside Down is less of a copy of our own world. Instead, could it simply be an arena created by Vecna on the day Will (Noah Schnapp) was taken by the demogorgon?
Remember, when Eleven sends Henry through what appears to be space, time, and lightning, he doesn’t land in the Upside Down. He lands in what appears to be a very different world. The Upside Down appears to be its own thing, but if there are limits to it, maybe there are limits to what Vecna is able to project?
And, if it’s an arena of some kind created as a mirror of Hawkins as a way to access the real world for Vecna, could it be not a circle but a clock? My guy is obsessed with clocks for some reason, and I have a feeling we could figure out why that is.
Again, those are just my theories about what the wall surrounding Hawkins in the Upside Down could be and what it could mean for the Stranger Things 5 Vol. 2 and beyond.